This article was originally published on RealClearPolicy.com on December 2, 2020.

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“Researchers gave thousands of dollars to homeless people. The results defied stereotypes.” “Cash transfers help homeless to find stable housing and jobs.” “Trailblazing study gave homeless $7,500 [CAD] – and it worked.” These recent headlines and articles about a new Canadian study are a cringeworthy — and destructive — distortion of reality.

 

At first glance, this unbridled optimism seems to be a reasonable synopsis of the study. Canadian researchers did give $5,700 USD to 50 homeless people and most of the recipients used the cash responsibly. Nearly every news outlet that reported on the New Leaf Project covered the study as proof that we should give more money directly to homeless people; they said we should give cash through charity, government programs, and drop it into Styrofoam cups. Unfortunately, this is a tragic misreading of the facts.

 

The root problem is that the study participants do not resemble the average homeless person on a street corner. Project New Leaf’s website is very forthright: “Project participants were carefully screened for program eligibility to ensure the highest likelihood of success.” This means they selected participants who were adults, newly homeless, citizens or legal residents, and who had low risk of mental health challenges and substance abuse.

 

The magnitude of those screening criteria is lost on those unfamiliar with homelessness. It is comparable to a survey finding that “a majority of registered Democrats voted for Donald Trump in 2020” — but the survey only allowed responses from Democrats who voted for Trump in 2016. So how representative were these study participants of the homeless population?

 

On a single night in 2019, The Department of Housing and Urban Development finds that there were around 568,000 homeless people in the US. Of these, roughly 100k were chronically homeless, and would have been excluded from the study. Add to that exclusion a segment of the population classified as “episodically” homeless. Those approximately 57,000 people are homeless occasionally, but not quite chronically.

 

Of the remaining “transitional” homeless, a factsheet from the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) informs us that around 30% of them abuse addictive substances (80% of the chronically homeless do). SAMHSA also estimates that around 5% of the transitionally homeless have mental health issues (these issues have affected 60% of the chronically homeless).

 

The actual screening criteria may have been more specific than that, since the New Leaf Project reports that they screened out any who were at risk for those disorders. Depending on how they defined “risk of mental health challenges and substance abuse,” the New Leaf Project screened out between 55% and 90% of all homeless people from participating in their study.

 

The disconnect between findings and perception gets worse. A typical person associates homelessness with panhandling. However, panhandlers are only a fraction of the homeless and are predominately the chronically homeless with addictions that this study did not examine. For example, a 2019 survey of Orlando’s panhandlers found that 92% of them were substance abusers. Most freely admitted to using their “earnings” on drugs and alcohol. An earlier study in Toronto found nearly identical results; 87% reported drug and alcohol use and the median self-reported spending on drugs, alcohol, and tobacco was greater than their spending on food.

 

The New Leaf Project showed potential for giving cash to a small, stable, and high-capacity tier of the homeless. There is nothing wrong with the fact that they only tested a solution on a subset of the homeless population — situations and solutions vary from person to person. Cash transfers may work for someone in a temporary crisis and may harm someone with a chronic addiction, destructive habits, or a mental disorder. Effective charity should offer different solutions for different situations.

 

However, that means that the findings of the New Leaf Project offer a policy option for a tiny fraction of the homeless. Thus, the study has essentially no application to the people you see on the street corner with a cardboard sign. Nine out of ten of those people will continue in their addictions, until passersby stop enabling them and start connecting them with the real help they need.

 

 

By Savannah Aleckson, published in the Joplin Globe on May 3rd, 2020

 

It’s been a historic year already, and we’re not even halfway through 2020. From the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the United States, to the subsequent bottoming out of the stock market and the accompanying job losses and panic, it’s been a rollercoaster. In an attempt to stabilize the economy in these tumultuous times, Congress recently passed the CARES Act, a massive relief package far surpassing any stimulus in US history.

The aim of the CARES Act is clear–to float an economic lifeline to those impacted by COVID-19. While help may be necessary for businesses and individuals suffering the undeserved economic consequences of shelter-in-place mandates, we ought to vigilantly watch interventions posited as “good” by the government. As we know, not everything touted as being helpful actually is. Thoughtful citizens ought to watch for three overlooked but very real negative effects of the CARES Act:

It will cause inflation, a win for bureaucracy and a loss for the average citizen.

The gargantuan size of the CARES Act is historic and provides relief to different sectors of the economy–large corporations, small businesses, non-profits and individuals–to the tune of two trillion dollars. Where does that money come from? It’s not money our federal government has, as we sit at a 23 trillion dollar national deficit. To cut checks to most Americans, float loans to businesses, and give grants to nonprofits, the government does a sort of sleight of hand–it sells government bonds that when cashed in require more money to be printed. It feels harmless; Americans need more money to weather this crisis. But does printing more money create more value in the economy? Does wealth increase when more dollar bills are in circulation? No. We know from Economics 101 that increasing the money supply without producing more labor, goods, or services causes inflation. Prices go up and tend to outpace increases in the average person’s paycheck.

Indeed, the ripple effects of these actions extend far beyond Capitol Hill–the local coffee shop where you get your morning pick-me-up will feel the effects, as will your next door neighbor who has been dutifully putting away a little money into savings each month and your own family as you budget for necessities like food and rent. Savings decrease in value because it takes more dollars than it once did to purchase goods or services. Inflation is like a tax on savings—rather than a direct tax paid to the government, inflation is the price paid for the government increasing the money supply.

It will prop up non-profits who have limited impact—or worse, a negative impact.

Under the CARES Act, nonprofits in existence March 1st, 2020 will be able to receive a loan up to 10 million dollars from the federal government. Should these non-profits keep their staff on payroll during this crisis, the loan will be forgiven, essentially turning the loan into a grant.

Is this a concern? Shouldn’t non-profits doing good work receive help to weather these trying times? Yes, they should. But who should give the help? The stimulus package can be thought of as the federal government giving back to taxpayers a portion of their own dollars they paid in taxes to use as they see fit (yes, a dream come true). But organizations claiming 501(c)3 status have never paid taxes. Should they receive money from a government to which they never gave? Rather than joining the money-grab and contributing to harmful inflation, nonprofits ought to lean on the compassion and generosity of donors in their communities, many of whom will soon receive an influx of cash from the return of their tax dollars.

Another compelling reason to put the onus of charity support on individuals is because the federal government is horrible at determining where resources should be directed at the local level. Private donors demand more accountability from the non-profits they support; they watch for indicators of a non-profit’s effectiveness, prudent spending, and a real impact made in the community. The federal government simply can’t be this discerning when distributing funds to nonprofits; in fact, no prerequisites are in place in the CARES Act to vet charities for their effectiveness. The unavoidable result of this indiscriminate giving is that effective, impactful charities won’t be the only ones who receive government funds, but ineffective, mis-managed, dependency-fostering non-profits will also–inevitably exacerbating the problems of unhealthy dependency and generational poverty.

It threatens the role of civil society.

In a global pandemic that has caused pain, fear, and a major economic downturn in our nation, help is warranted. And yes, a good argument can be made that the federal government ought to quell some of the damaging effects. However, as responsible citizens who value our liberty and want the best for our vulnerable neighbors, we must remain on guard against government’s usurpation of responsibilities that belong to us—namely, the responsibility to care for our family, friends, and neighbors.

Government interventions such as the CARES Act are dangerous. As resources are pumped into the economy in the form of checks to individuals, grants to businesses, or hand-outs to nonprofits, the unfortunate and all-too-common effect is the undermining of civil society; when we think the government is taking care of our neighbor, we’re less likely to.

These are unprecedented times, and certainly unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures to address them adequately. However, federal responses to crises should never interfere with the individual duty to care for our neighbor. When it does, our social fabric decays as we become an increasingly isolated and unconcerned society– certainly a more terrible crisis than the current one.

Savannah Aleckson is the True Charity Initiative Regional Director for the Joplin, MO area. True Charity seeks to equip charities, churches, and nonprofits with the principles and practice of effective charity.

by James Whitford

Our Founding Fathers said so. 

The debate as to whether helping those in need should be a matter of public or private funding is not new. Few would argue, though, that helping the poor is a not a responsibility within a healthy society. The question here is with whom does that responsibility rest? Government or the compassionate neighbor? Our Founding Fathers had an opinion. During the Haitian revolution, islanders fled to New England escaping French persecution. The influx of refugees proved difficult and a petition to the federal government was made for assistance. In 1794, James Madison stood on the House floor and objected, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” 

The fact that benevolence from the public treasury is not a power granted by the Constitution was reaffirmed by Thomas Jefferson in 1817. He penned, “Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action.”

In like, Benjamin Franklin simply said “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means.”

That was their opinion and if it’s yours, you’re already favoring private funding over public. 

But even if we set aside the hope of our Founding Fathers to spare this great Republic from a metastatic federal government, we should ask ourselves, “Can we afford it?”  

We can’t afford public funding.

Just checked the U.S. Debt Clock. Twenty-one trillion, two-hundred twelve billion, one hundred seven million and 6 other digits that are escalating too quickly for me to record. No, we can’t afford it. Not including Medicare and Social Security, the federal government projects to spend 918 billion dollars on caring for the poor this year. That number is important. Not only does it represent a fourth of our entire federal budget, but it’s very close to the annual debt escalation over the last decade. In a nation where we celebrate freedom, we’re wise to remember that the borrower is slave to the lender. Indebtedness and freedom don’t mix well. Jesus rightly said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Today, I believe we can rightly say, “Don’t take from Caesar what he doesn’t have.” Now on that point of what government has or doesn’t have, we should ask ourselves, “Whose money is it, anyway?”

Public money belongs to someone else.

Some may think this a lofty argument for private funding, but for the hardworking taxpayer, it’s very relevant. By that person, the question, “Whose money is it?” may very well be answered, “It’s mine!” Is he right? Consider Micah 4:4 and the description under Christ’s future reign: “…each man will sit under his own grapevine and under his own fig tree with no one to frighten him.” Whose fig tree? His own.  These and scores of other verses in the Bible indicate that private property is a natural right. John Locke, whose writings greatly influenced our current standard of law, conveyed personal property as a God-given right and the product of one’s labor: “…the Work of his Hands, we may say are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and…hath mixed his Labour with…thereby makes it his Property.”

In other words, if a man plows a field, the harvest is his. 

Whether it goes to Planned Parenthood or comes to my Gospel Rescue Mission, it’s not the government’s to give. It’s someone else’s personal property and that someone else should have the right to support what he or she desires. 

If you agree that it’s not the government’s money, then we must ask, “Can it be the government’s responsibility?”

It’s our responsibility

In Isaiah 58, God promises a life that flourishes when we divide our bread with the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the poor. Justice for the poor is His and ultimately, the Church is His vehicle to deliver it. In Isaiah 58, He was speaking to a nation of His people. Today, the mandate still rests with the nation of His people. 

There are reasons for that. Paul writes in 2 Timothy, “Support widows who are genuinely widows.” Pure and undefiled religion not only included helping orphans and widows, but discerning those who really needed the help. The Church, built by relationships, was the natural source for this accountability. This principle of people-who-know helping people-in-need would later be defined as subsidiarity, addressed by Pope Pius XI in 1931. “Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative…so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.”

Subsidiarity is about neighbor helping neighbor before the government helps your neighbor. 

Some might say, “That’s impossible!” Edward Divine, a leader in the formation of social work and General Secretary of the New York Charitable Organization Society in 1896 challenged, “If there were no resources in times of exceptional distress except the provision which people would voluntarily make on their own account and the informal neighborly help which people would give to one another… most of the misfortunes would still be provided for.”  

I believe it. I was in Joplin, Missouri on May 22 of 2011 when it suffered a catastrophic disaster. A mile-wide F5 tornado rendered more than 7000 people homeless in less than an hour. I watched what government funding could never have done. The relief provided through personal sacrifice, private contributions and countless kind and neighborly acts was immeasurable and proof that in times of great need, a good neighbor can do much more than a big government.

Lastly, we can bet that with government funding comes government oversight. These strings are long tying our missions to bureaucrats in Washington. And though they may not seem too stringent, it’s only a matter of time before the administration changes along with the rules.  

To embrace liberty is to embrace more than just freedom from government tyranny, but freedom from government dependency. After all, the latter is certain to lead to the former.

A version of this article was published in the Joplin Globe on February 25th 2019 and Instigate Magazine’s January/February 2019 issue.

By James Whitford, published by the Hill on July 1st, 2018

After nearly two decades of service to our neighbors in need, I’ve learned an important lesson: People struggling in poverty need hope. And few things offer more hope than a job. My time spent in ministry to the homeless and poor has led me to support the work requirement reforms to welfare programs in the House farm bill as consistent with both Christian principles and practical lessons.

As Christians, we must never lose sight of our responsibility to go beyond alleviating the immediate suffering of those in poverty, but also to help people help themselves to rise out of poverty — for good. We must endeavor to empower those in need so they can feed and clothe themselves and their families in the future.

As Christians, we are called to charity, but we’re never told in the Bible that charity shouldn’t include work. In Deuteronomy, God instructed His people to leave the extra wheat in the fields and grapes in the vineyard for the poor wanderer, the orphan and the widow, but He didn’t say to glean or gather them for the poor. For anyone who wanted help, work was required.

And today, if we really care, work is still required. This means if a person is able, we must help him to find and keep a job. Unfortunately, the majority of able-bodied men and women on food stamps across America are not working even during a time of record-low unemployment. Now is the time for Christians to support the elimination of federal policies that have trapped so many people in hopeless poverty, dependent on the impersonal and inhumane “charity” of government.

My ministry has reinforced to me the power and hope of work — because I’ve seen it firsthand. The transformational power of work overcomes addiction and dependency, helping people discover self-sufficiency and a life of meaning instead.

The Prophet Isaiah calls on us not just to feed people but to “pour yourself out for the hungry and to satisfy the afflicted.” When we invest ourselves like this to really help people out of poverty, Isaiah goes on to promise we’ll “be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.”

In our ministry, we believe that every person has a reason to hope that his poverty will end. But there is no meaningful path toward that goal if it does not include that most fundamental of anti-poverty programs: a job. People who come to us experience work and learn there is reason to hope.

That hope is lacking for far too many people on welfare today, and the House farm bill’s changes to the food stamp program would empower missions like mine to address it.

Every person is a noble creation who deserves the opportunity to succeed. We are failing in our Christian duty to love our neighbors as ourselves if we fail to provide all people, of whatever background, the real hope of a better tomorrow that comes through a job. Smart policy that prioritizes work for able-bodied adults helps ensure that we uphold that duty.